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“Being a minimalist means that you value yourself more than material things.” —Brian Gardner

We often think of minimalism as shedding away our external possessions and living with only the essentials. Certainly, this is very much part of it.

But I am learning the journey is not just external, it is also internal. To experience true abundance from minimalism, it must start within.

Just as some people accumulate things to create a false identity or pursue a mythical state of happiness, eliminating yourself of possessions without coming from a place of inward truth is short-sighted. They are disconnected.

Living an abundant life derives from traveling a journey of intentional self growth. It’s functioning through your true self to live a simple life. It’s getting good at being simple. Self simplicity becomes the clarity in which you find meaning. It’s the removal of the unnecessary. It’s the discovery of what you value most.

Self simplicity is the intersection of self-care and minimalism.

As you begin to focus on your inner self, minimalism becomes the by-product. (tweet that)

Here are 5 simple ways to live an abundant life through self simplicity.

1. Simplify your wardrobe.

Two years ago, I adopted a minimalist wardrobe. A solid colored t-shirt, jeans and a pair of Vans sums up my daily wardrobe year round. It’s the attire that I feel most like myself in. Because of this minimalist approach, I am able to eliminate unnecessary energy that gets put into what I wear. It spares me a few more minutes in the morning to sit at the table with my family for breakfast before we all head out the door. It results in one less source of stress and anxiety within my day.

2. Eliminate digital distractions.

As our mobile device is the bridge that connects us to the world, it’s also the very thing that pulls us from living in the moment. For the past couple years, I’ve removed all notifications on my phone. It no longer is a constant distraction that pulls me from the present moment.

One Saturday evening while my wife and son were gone, I had a sudden impulse to remove the TV from our main floor family room—the room where we spend most of our time. Since then, our family has become much closer and our focus is no longer fragmented. We play more, we have spontaneous dance parties, we listen to music and sing together, we grab our own books and read, and we have quiet time together.

I even began noticing glances at my watch would allow different levels of anxiety to creep in. My ego would spew off all the things I should be doing instead of what I was doing at that moment. So I no longer wear a watch. It’s eliminated a feeding source for my ego. And the anxiety that would creep in from wearing a watch has since subsided.

3. Focus on your art, not your job.

Most people dislike getting up in the morning because of the job they have. The unfortunate reality is we spend a third of our lives in the workplace. So why do we drudge through it working for the weekend?

Changing your mindset in how you approach your job opens up life’s abundance. It no longer becomes a balancing act of work and life, but becomes life itself.

Remove yourself from the cog-like behaviors and pour your unique abilities into all that you do. It makes getting up in the morning a lot easier. This shift in mindset has transformed how I work.

Previously, my daily goal was working towards a promotion, a more prestigious title, and a larger paycheck. That’s it. Since practicing self-care, office politics has become less attractive, the race up the corporate ladder no longer serves a purpose, and the prestigious titles are now just words.

Focus on the difference you can make by the work only you can do. New meaning will immediately arise.

4. Learn to say no to things.

I used to feel like I had to say yes to everything thinking that’s what the path to success looked like. Often times these commitments and obligations I agreed to caused unnecessary stress and friction within my relationships: family, friends, colleagues.

The ability to say no provides space in my life to focus on the things I value most. It’s not about being involved with everything, but rather involving myself with the right things.

5. Embrace the mundane.

It wasn’t until I committed to traveling a journey of intentional self growth that I discovered where life is really lived—in the mundane. Life is lived in those in-between moments we often hurry past. It’s in the car rides to daycare, standing in the grocery line with your son, reading to your kids before bed time, or clearing off the dinner table as a family.

It’s all the things that are part of our days that we tend to gloss over. But these are the simple memories that last a lifetime. These are the experiences that write our story and shape our lives. It’s those simple things that matter and become the things we appreciate most.

I’ve got to level with you. This simple living thing isn’t always so simple.

What began as a quest for less unlocked a world of wonder.

In one course-altering, divine, yet unlikely encounter, I awakened to the realization that minimalism was the solution to my chaotic and overwhelming daily life.

I’ve never looked back. It is a moment I will forever be grateful for.

I intensely and ruthlessly purged our belongings, and it did not take long to feel the impact of living with less. It was the unfamiliar feeling of relief.

I could breathe again.

This newfound peace soon began to migrate into the way I was spending my time. I found myself clearing my schedule with the same intensity I did my belongings. I figured that was it.

Then, well, one thing leads to another. I should have known. It always does. Here I am, a year and a half later, and a completely different person both inside and out.

You see, this minimalism is a tricky thing. She waltzes in dressed as simplicity, and the next thing you know she’s unraveled your soul.

There’s nothing simple about that.

While minimalism is about your stuff, I’ve found it has very little to do with your stuff.

As I journeyed toward a life of less, I was surprised to discover a world of complexity along the way. This not so simple life kept challenging my assumptions about myself. It pressed me to transform areas of my life that, for so long, I let operate on autopilot.

This not so simple side of less just may stir up parts of you that you’ve long given up on. Here are a handful of mine.

Adventure

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the pull toward adventure.

As I grew up, the love of adventure was replaced with a fear of losing it all. I preferred predictability to chance in order to maintain this tight grip on all that I cherished.

This simple life has awakened my once dormant passion to dare greatly, get uncomfortable and take an alternate route. It has inspired me to loosen my grip in order to take big leaps.

While you won’t find me on the latest episode of The Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid anytime soon, I’ve discovered little ways to uncover adventure in my daily life. Because in the words of Moana,

“The call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me.”

Self-Discovery

“You either walk into your story and you own it, or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” – Brene Brown

I was hiding behind my clutter and busyness to avoid self-reflection for fear of what I’d find. If I kept myself busy enough, and my life packed full to the brim, I wouldn’t have time to be accountable for the state of my soul.

Well wouldn’t you know it, with less on my plate and more time on my hands, I had nothing left to do but dive inside. I wasn’t too pleased with what I found.

While once filled with curiosity, adventure, leadership and bravery I had grown into an unteachable, worry-prone, perfectionist, hiding from my skill set and attempting to prove my worth through the art of doing.

My worth was entwined in my ability to be perfect, and it left me lost in the “try hard” life.

Doing the hard work of diving inside allowed me to find the truth about who I am and the source of my worthiness. I’ve become delightful company.

I lost my desire to learn a long time ago. With my nursing degree came quite an educational hangover, which lingered for many years. From my faith to my parenting, I thought I had it all figured out. In turn, I became invested in eliminating variables and preventing change.

“Once you stop learning, you start dying.” – Albert Einstein

Becoming a minimalist was one of the biggest transitions I had yet to undertake. It led me to discover I could change and that a willingness to change is the first step toward growth.

Bravery

I used to do hard things. I remember them well.

Somewhere along the way I became a worrier. I tried to pretend that my worry was actually responsible parenting or productive planning, but the long and short of it was, hard things terrified me.

Call it a need to control or self-preserve, but eventually worry turned into fear and fear became my go-to.

Nothing good grows from a place of fear, and this not so simple life helped me uncover my bravery again.

This simple life has me looking at material possessions in a whole new light. I find myself valuing my time and resources not by what they can offer me, but how they can be used to bless others.

More than that, I want to be generous with my story in hopes of sharing exactly that, hope.

“Our story isn’t for us in the first place. It never was. It’s for others, and those others need you to own it and share it.” – Joy McMillan

#NotSoSimpleLiving

Sure, simplifying will lead to less. Less to do, less to want, less to need. However, I found the place of less to be a decoy. If less is really all you’re after, then watch your step because the simple life is riddled with rabbit holes.

Don’t confuse simplicity with an easy life.

It’s simply where the adventure begins. It’s where we find purpose and in turn, the capacity to discover what makes us come alive.

Now that I know a bit more about myself I’ve been thinking, maybe the simple life was never what I was after anyway.

***

Rachelle Crawford blogs at Abundant Life With Less where she encourages others to ditch the excess in order to find freedom, joy and purpose in the everyday. For more inspiration, find her onInstagram.

This world is obsessed with measuring up. Research shows we are exposed to thousands of advertising messages every day—and hidden inside each of those ads is a mistruth: “You don’t measure up until you buy our product.”

Ad agencies are good. Real good. They know how to sneak into our psyches and change the story we tell ourselves. Before long our brains begin to believe their lie—that our lives can be measured by what we buy, wear, drive, and live in. And while their bottom line bursts at the seams, the consumer is broke—financially and otherwise.

Measuring up is breaking us up.

This NY Times article from 2008—written during the Great Recession—shows how powerful a slogan like, “Live Richly” can be. It even contributed to the housing bubble that negatively impacted so many lives.

“It’s very difficult for one advertiser to come to you and change your perspective,” said Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard who has studied persuasion in financial advertising. “But as it becomes socially acceptable for everyone to accumulate debt, everyone does.”

Everyone does it, so that makes it okay. As a culture, we begin to measure our lives by the things we can buy, because others are buying it too.

The simple life is not immune to these advertisements. And we aren’t immune to the struggle of measuring our life by standards that contradict the way of simplicity. The nature of today’s world, being in constant reach of advertising through screens and print, demands our intentionality of focus on the true measures of life.

Designing a simple life invites us to measure our lives differently. We realize as we pare down that we don’t have to keep up. We don’t have to buy, borrow, upgrade, or upsize to secure our place in the world.

I need reminders often that my worth isn’t found by the world’s measuring stick. I get to define my own success, and live a meaningful and abundant life.

You do too. Try these new measurements for size, and simplify.

5 Better Ways to Measure Your Life

1. Gratitude.

With a measure of gratitude, you gain the world. When you are grateful for what you already have, you don’t need more. Gratitude is always enough.

This perspective is a shield to the thousands of messages of ‘not enough’ we hear every day. Gratitude turns what we have into enough. We don’t need to have those shoes, that device, or and that new car.

2. Generosity.

“To measure the man, measure his heart.” Malcolm Forbes once said.

A great gift of simple living is the freedom to give. The infinite freedoms available when we design a life of less allows for infinite ways to be generous. Whether it’s with our time, money, talents, hospitality, donations, or airline miles—when the measuring stick of things ends, generosity keeps growing.

3. Contentment

Advertisers bank on the public’s perpetual discontent. In fact, they create much of our discontent through their stealth word play and product development. It’s evident in the lines outside Apple stores days before the next iPhone is released, which has just enough new capabilities to make the previous model obsolete in the eyes of the consumer.

Contentment is not the satisfaction of want; it’s the pursuit of having enough. And it invites an unmistakable freedom into our lives.

4. Availability

Bob Goff is known for his fun and whimsical personality. He famously put his personal cell phone number in the back of a NYT bestselling book, and he expects and answers calls. He makes himself available.

He also says he plans his calendar nine months and one day in advance, no further, in case he is to be become a grandfather. His purpose is to be available.

Busyness is no way to measure a life. Busy is a thief. It’s a phantom measure of worth and success and it will never get as much done as availability will. Remain available.Learn to say no, and measure your life by the things you get to say yes to.

5. Purpose

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as once saying.

If we pay too close attention to how the world measures life we will never understand the difference that our life, our one life, can make. Simplicity of home, time, and character magnifies the very things we were designed for—it points us to the significance of who we are.

We are purposed for much more than our net worth and closet size. Simplify and live well.

The Great Recession of 2008 changed us. More and more people are looking for a new way, a simple way to live. As advertisers revamp their messages toward this post-recession culture, we can redefine the measure by which we live. It helps to remember the best things in life can’t be pitched in thirty second ads.

***

Lisa Avellan blogs at Simple and Soul where she inspires and equips others to live with intention. You can also find her on Facebook.

The finish line is in sight. So far, you’ve hosted a play date, dragged Halloween costumes out for dress-up, played at the park, supervised finger painting, and judged a Lego competition (which you determined to be a tie—naturally). Dinner is done and the children are bathed.

After your spouse reads a story to the kids and makes sure their teeth have been brushed, you seal the day with a kiss on their foreheads. You begin looking forward to a calm evening watching some television or catching up with your spouse.

Unfortunately, before you even have a chance to sit down, you quickly realize the day’s work isn’t done just yet.

While the children have “technically” cleaned up after themselves, your home still feels a bit chaotic.

Costumes are falling out of the king-size plastic bin you swore would solve all of your organization headaches. Kids’ and adult sneakers and flip-flops are scattered beside the shoe shelf you built beside the back door. The kids’ art easel is blocking the laundry closet, which is bulging with its own clutter. And while the kids did pick up most of the Legos from the floor, their favorite creations are still being displayed atop a stack of unread women’s magazines on the coffee table—the same coffee table you were hoping to rest your feet upon.

By the time you go to bed, the house is “mostly” back in order. But in the back of your mind you know the following evening you’ll be facing the same clutter once again.

Maybe It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

Ten years ago, after a conversation with my neighbor, my wife and I sold, donated, or discarded over 60% our possessions. We removed clothes, furniture, decorations, cookware, tools, books, toys, plus anything else we could find in our home that was not immediately useful or beautiful.

At the time, the concept of purposefully owning less stuff was foreign to our worldview—especially being raised in a society that relentlessly promises happiness and fulfillment in our next purchase. But, for some reason, the idea of owning less sounded oddly attractive.

I had been introduced to the world of minimalism. And I was drawn to it.

Today Americans consume twice as many material goods as we did fifty years ago. The size of the average American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years and now contains about three hundred thousand items. Our stuff has even spilled outside our walls. Due to our garage clutter, 25 percent of people with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside and another 32 percent have room for only one vehicle! And I haven’t even mentioned the 10% of us who rent offsite storage.

We are drowning in a sea of possessions—and we feel it almost every day. We’re tired, stressed, hurried, and financially strapped.

The most popular solution to our battle against clutter seems to be “just implement better organization”—or at least, that’s what we’re told is the solution. So we’ve bought colorful buckets, bins and baskets from the same good folks who sold us the costumes and the Legos and the magazines and dryer sheets. But in the end, although the storage solutions we’ve bought promised to solve all our woes, they’ve only packaged them differently.

But there’s a solution that’s even more effective than organizing.

The surprising solution you’ll never find in an Ikea catalogue, plastered on a billboard or featured on a Google banner ad is to own less stuff. Owning less results in less cleaning and organizing and managing and repairing.

But the benefits go far beyond that: Owning less sets you free to pursue your dreams and become the person you desire to be.

The Unlikely Way

When you choose to live more lightly—both releasing some of what you have and choosing to add less to what you already do have—doors to pursuing your dreams begin to open. I’ve seen it in my life and you can experience it in yours.

Because when you own less, you’re freed up for what matters most.

My friend Marjorie had kept a jar of coins her grandfather had given her for about ten years. When she moved homes, she’d hauled the jar to a shelf in her new closet. They weren’t precious coins that could be sold for a profit; they would be worth whatever the screen displayed when she dumped them into the sorting machine at her bank. Marjorie had promised herself that she and her kids would do something special one day, like visiting a waterpark. But they never did.

When Marjorie’s heart and mind were captured with the more of less, she finally took those coins—and all the others she’d scraped out of junk drawers, couch cracks and purses—and cashed them in. After they’d gone to the waterpark, Marjorie had money left that she was able to donate to a local charity.

Similarly, Sarah recently told me her story of always wanting to do mission work overseas. When her church announced a weeklong trip to Haiti, Sarah began dreaming of going with her teenage daughter. Inspired, Sarah and her daughter made the connection between all they owned and what they hoped to be and do. Together they gathered and sorted much of the stuff in their home they no longer needed or used.

Sarah’s daughter made $325 on Craigslist and eBay selling electronics they no longer used. Sarah held a yard sale where she sold their extras and welcomed donations to purchase supplies for orphans in Haiti. Sarah and her daughter were not only able to raise the money for their trip, they experienced benefits they’d not even anticipated. Their clutter-free home didn’t accumulate more clutter each day because they were living with less. The space was pleasant to live in and they loved the extra time they gained by caring for less stuff.

These are real stories. And I hear more and more almost every day. Stories of people who have begun to live their dreams, because they chose to live with less stuff.

Just Do It

If the stuff you own is keeping you from pursuing your dreams—dreams for your family, dreams for yourself, dreams for others—then you can begin to embrace those dreams by taking a few simple steps to live with less. And while these baby steps begin with decluttering—which is, admittedly, not so glamorous—the ultimate purpose is to put yourself in a position to fulfill the dreams you have for your life.

So before you leave this article, I want you to write down your dream. If you use a journal, go get it. If you tape notecards to your bathroom mirror, grab a notecard. If you post sticky notes on your computer, go get a pad. Keeping in view the bigger picture of why you’re reducing the amount of stuff you own will help as you purpose to reduce the amount you own.

What is your dream?

If you keep your eye on the reasons you’re aiming to live with less, you’ll have more energy to do the work before you.

Now that your motivation has been articulated, here are a few tips to help you get started removing the excess from your home:

1. Start Small. Focus on easy battles, scoring quick wins and establishing momentum in your decluttering journey. Don’t make hard decisions. Just grab an empty bag and remove everything you can easily part with. Put them in the bag and set them aside for you. You can sort them later.

2. Start Easy. A bedroom, bathroom or living room will be easier to begin with than an attic or kitchen. Plus, if you remove what you don’t need from these frequently used spaces you’ll experience positive effects almost immediately.

3. Start Noticing the Benefits. Take a step back, look at what you’ve accomplished. Are you experiencing more peace, more calm, less distraction, and more peace? Notice the practical ways owning less improves your life—and use that motivation to tackle harder spaces in your home.

As you begin to declutter, experiment to discover what makes the process most satisfying for you. Is it offering scooters and baseball mitts to the younger kids next door? Is it seeing a once-crowded shelf become usable once again? Is it setting goals of gathering 100 items each weekend and relaxing during the week? Every person’s process is different, so find what works for you.

Live the Dream

Remember that index card on your bathroom mirror? As you choose to own less you’ll free up time, money and energy to be who you want to be. When you shop less, you spend less time driving from store to store and spend less money on what you don’t need. When you release what you don’t need you spend less time organizing and cleaning all you own. Don’t let those gains go to waste.

One cold, drizzling night in January, I stood on the street watching in disbelief and shock as my house burned. We had just moved into our house three months prior, and we still had a garage full of boxes waiting to be unpacked.

My family was safe, but my beloved pets were lost, as were the majority of our worldly possessions.

In the following months, friends shyly joked I was taking my love of simplicity to the extreme as we struggled to rebuild our lives with the blank slate we had been presented with.

As I shared our struggle on social media, I was inundated with stories from all over the world of how others had coped with rebuilding after a loss, whether it was a fire, a flood, a tornado, a hurricane, a burglary. We weren’t alone. I found comfort in that truth. And even more so in the stories of those who chose voluntary simple living after the tragedy:

A single mom in Louisiana told me that after losing her home in a tornado, she and her daughter moved into a tiny house on her parent’s property in Alabama. She couldn’t be happier.

A widow in Salt Lake City shared with me that following the tragic death of her husband, she moved from their large home of 40 years to a smaller 2-bedroom condo in order to free up resources to spend more time with kids and grandchildren now scattered throughout the country.

A married dad of three in Kansas shared that after a flood wiped out his home and his business property, his family downsized from a 4,000 sq. ft. home into a 1,100 sq. ft. home, and he started working from home. He said the relief he feels from simplifying his family’s lifestyle far outweighs the grief he felt when the flood stole their stuff.

A married couple from my hometown in Texas told me that after losing their expensive condo in Galveston in a hurricane, they chose a cute little bungalow in Dallas. They replaced only the items they needed, living a minimalist lifestyle so they could spend their resources traveling to do mission work in Africa.

Losing everything forces you to evaluate your lifestyle and your needs. In the days following the fire, while we bunked down at my husband’s parents’ house, I found I needed very little. A few clothes and a pair of shoes. Some toiletries. Clothes and school supplies for my kids. A new computer so I could work again. Few other things seemed necessary.

While I hope you never need these tips, I want to share with you a few things I’ve learned from my experience losing everything, as well as tips I’ve gotten from others who’ve lost it all.

Tips for Simplifying After a Tragedy

• First, get yourself and your family safe. Don’t worry about anything except the basics: shelter, food, clothing. Those needs are primary, everything else can wait. Your family (especially if you have young children) will need your strength and protection.

• Let yourself mourn. You can’t recover until you mourn what you lost—whether that’s a loved one, a pet, the loss of your sense of safety, the loss of physical stuff. Get counseling if you need. This is a major life change, and it’s going to take time to heal. Treat it as such.

• Make use of donations. In the days following the fire, neighbors dropped off clothes and shoes for my sons, clothes for me and my husband, small kitchen appliances, books, toys, even home decor. We were so grateful for these items—they bought us time before we needed to spend money replacing items. Use what’s given with a grateful heart, knowing that for those items that are just not quite right, you can pass them on to others who need them after you’re back on your feet.

• Don’t be in a hurry to replace physical stuff. Yes, you’re hurting, but try to take a few moments to dream. This is your chance to put together a new life from the ground up (literally). What does that look like? Write it down. Define the vision of what you want your rebuilt life to look like. Lose all your clothing? Maybe it’s a good time to put together that capsule wardrobe you’ve been thinking about. Lose your books? Maybe it’s a time to switch to a digital library. Lost your home? Maybe it’s time to downsize into something smaller and better suited to your new lifestyle.

• Let people help you. One of the most surprising and most amazing things that happened after the fire was the outpouring of love and support from family and friends, even strangers. Cards and donations from coworkers and clients, Scout groups, friends, neighbors, readers of my blog, even the local donut shop. I have never felt so humbled, blessed, and loved in all my life. A woman in Walmart handed me the last $20 in her wallet after overhearing us talk about the fire while purchasing clothes and supplies to send my kids back to school. These outpourings of love lifted us while we struggled with our loss, and they made us even more aware of the needs around us that we could fill once we got back on our feet.

• Replace items as needed. Once you’re stabilized and have the resources, start replacing items you lost, but don’t rush it. Replace things as you need them, and be choosy about it when you can. Pick things built to last, items you love and will use regularly. Don’t buy just to buy. Try replacing things on an as-needed basis—even borrow when you can until you’re sure you need to buy the item for permanent ownership.

• Never forget to be grateful. It’s very possible that the worst thing that has ever happened to you has just happened. But you’re still here, and people love you. Be grateful. Thank God for your blessings. Point your mind toward the good and the abundant, and place your expectations toward building a life even better than you had before.

I was surprised that I didn’t mourn my stuff so much as the loss of “safety” I had felt—I doubt I’ll ever leave the house again without wondering if it’ll be there when I return. My heart still aches for my lost pets, the only real loss from that night that hurt. But I’m still here, my husband and children are safe, and thanks to insurance, we have the means to rebuild.

Now we’re rebuilding our house carefully and intentionally—trying to decide what to replace of all that was lost.

Life is good, despite tragedy. And we’ve been given a new start to live a simpler lifestyle.